These are two texts that were written several posts (months ago), they are now planned art works for a project entitle ‘Mobile Library’, for which I am developing a publication. Art works from blog posts – not a first for me but hopefully here and now will explain this particular process.
text one:
Flash dance in scaffold open door firework run
“Shit, I truly think we might have destroyed her performance”
We had escaped from the party out the back door. Further we climbed up the road to meet a wire fence taller than twice our height. A small gap at the bottom allowed us access to the wasteland beyond: a place for crack den escapades. The night was full of the moon though, so no drug takers and beer can rusters got in our way. The broken wall at the other end of the field overlooked yet more ruin bathed in nothing but city light reflected off distant clouds – and the moon joined in to affect the landscape with such a haze to fit our drunken state. The wall was anything but safe but we climbed it anyway:
“Yes but, it was quite funny – I thought it had finished and I did apologise immediately. And you, you hid behind the door out of sight and it was your dare”
“I enjoyed our own private dance inside the sculpture though: the builders light really set the mood. We must have looked like a couple of flash dancers having a rave from the outside. Arms in the air with nothing but a wide birth of scaffolding around us, our very own catacomb aside from the rest…”
“Sit up straight or you’ll fall”
text two:
Gut throat and rhyme
“I recite the written description directly in to the camera. Little do I know that it focuses on my mouth alone. Whilst brandishing my characterisation in to the lens Len’s laughter escapes. A willowing dip in sensibility, a slight whine and then a realisation that gobbles up the sound and swallows only to let go again: to exasperate or to exult. Such an incantation this is! I release, knowing it’s exacting affect, its altitude in decibels, a measured intensity of two sources: a logarithm of gut throat and rhyme.”
(source one) Len had my laughter
“There’s a hill so steep that your bike would have to be pushed, not ridden, on the return home.”
Len laughed at the revelation of his creation, as we sat in the front room of his hill top semi-detached in Crookes, on the northern shoulder of Sheffield. This was 1989 and I remember match sticks making a composition of a house on a lane with a tree in the background: a snowy scene with fading orange light.
Len held the can of my laughter. Len’s brother was Jack. I wear Jack’s jumper and laugh. And talk in to the camera with the effect of conversation.
(source two) Talking in to camera
Sat in this place we face one another with teacups and sauces and crumpets in the middle, and a shiny Mongolian teapot reflecting our convex torsos noses knees and shoulders. We begin to write down every detail of the character in front of us, drawing out physicality on the surface using words that describe our knowledge of one another. At first a tip of the head, then the brow, the cheekbone and mouth and ears, connected by the odd smile. Then eyes come with a flash of further description. Then comes laughter; how do you describe laughter in words without alluding to the person’s history?
To edit text you first have to edit film. So – edit the film, re-play the film and decipher the words spoken.
When speaking to camera I will be aware of myself. I will laugh.
